


The Demon Rebellion

by Buffintruder



Category: Bartimaeus - Jonathan Stroud
Genre: Canon Compliant, Conspiracy Theories, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Jonathan Stroud Read This and So Should You, Post-Canon, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:55:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21947692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Buffintruder/pseuds/Buffintruder
Summary: A historical fiction retelling of events during the Demon Rebellion, by Lucille Lutyens, August 5th, 2108
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	The Demon Rebellion

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Bartimaeus fan zine, which can be found here https://drive.google.com/open?id=1hEx6F9CIezhnH5uBdStvd-v3MMsGIiJK  
> I definitely recommend checking it out, there's so much cool stuff in there!

Look, I don’t get why we have to tell each other spooky demon stories. Isn’t camping by ourselves in the middle of the night creepy enough? Plus I don’t really have any good ones.

I’m not saying demons can’t be scary! I just think that we shouldn’t be so quick to trust old dead magicians when they say they’re all evil, because it’s not like they’ve  _ ever _ kept information from the public to maintain their power. Also I’m bad at telling scary stories.

Okay, I get it, it’s my turn.  _ Fine, _ I’ll go. I wouldn’t  _ dare _ try and have my turn be skipped, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t have any spooky stories, but I do have a conspiracy theory. Is that good enough for you,  _ Anthony? _

So anyway. You know how my mom’s a history professor? Well, one of the things she teaches about is the fall of the British Empire. I mean you know the story, Mandrake saving the day, Kathleen Jones helping out, the new government coming into place. Do you ever think about how even though Kathleen Jones spent her life fighting against magicians and faced down the Demon Rebellion, she was still the biggest advocate for the personhood of demons?

I swear, I’m not just spouting off my political beliefs, this is entirely relevant. Shut up, I would not fuck a demon. There aren’t any left, anyway. Not that I would if they were still here!

So there’s some controversy over whether these witnesses can be trusted, but apparently on the day of the Demon Rebellion, there are a couple people who saw Mandrake cast spells—not with Gladstone’s staff, but like actual spells, like how the people taken over by demons did. Plus people saw him talk to other demons like he knew them—I’m not saying it's a fact, that’s why this is a  _ conspiracy theory! _

But that’s not the full basis of my theory, it gets weirder from there. What is indisputable is that one of the demons Mandrake frequently worked with was called Bartimaeus. I think that’s how you pronounce it. Ugh, no I know I just said I don’t know how to say it, but it’s definitely not like  _ that. _ Please never make that combination of sounds with your mouth again.

So. Bartimaeus was an old demon, who worked with many famous magicians, including someone called Ptolemy. 

You know, like those Greeks that took over Egypt. Weren’t you paying attention in Mr. Thompson’s class last year?

A bunch of those Greeks—Macedonians, whatever—were called Ptolemy, but this one was special. He wrote some book talking about how he was friends with some demons, including Bartimaeus. He claimed to have gone to the place they came from. I don’t know how factual that part is, but he did write a book about it, so. My mom says there are a bunch of other accounts of people who tried but went crazy or died, but I dunno. I kind of like the idea.

Shut up.

So that’s my piece. I think Mandrake was possessed by Bartimaeus, and they worked together to stop the Demon Rebellion. Your turn Jules.

No, you all agreed when I said I’d just say a conspiracy theory! I told you I don’t have any stories! Fine, I guess I’ll just  _ make one up! _ I’m warning you though, it won’t be spooky.

Just as long as we’re on the same page about this.

Once upon a time, there was a demon called Bartimaeus. He lived as all demons lived, in cohorts with evil magicians without ever questioning the oppression they inflicted onto everyone else. Or not exactly cohorts, because demons were bound by magicians. Either way, he worked alongside them, gleefully doing their evil bidding, even if he did not view the magicians any better than the rest of humanity.

But one day he met one called Ptolemy, who was kind where other magicians were cruel, caring when others were selfish. Ptolemy understood that demons were creatures so wildly different from humans, from a place that we can’t even imagine. How could he expect them to have the same morality as us?

Hush, it’s my story, I can add my own beliefs.

He talked to demons, not to change their minds necessarily, but to seek understanding so that perhaps some common ground could be found and peace could be formed.

But his conversations had a different impact than he planned. True peace was not created between our two kinds, though given that humans still haven’t found peace amongst ourselves, can you really blame him? Instead, what he did do was impact Bartimaeus and the other demons he worked with forever.

Their conversations on morality and cultural differences evolved into true friendship, to the point where the demons even carried him across all the dangerous barriers between our worlds and showed him their home.

After Ptolemy eventually died, Bartimaeus went back to his old way of doing things, working with magicians and hurting commoners. But there was always some doubt, some hesitancy, a part of him always questioning if there wasn’t a better way of doing things.

That brings us to the turn of the millennia. Britain was still an empire, but it was starting to lose its grip, busy fighting the rebelling colonies while the regular people rioted and protested the sending of troops to their death.

Among the magicians was a boy called John Mandrake. He was as cold and conniving as the rest of them, but deep down was a spark of good.

I’m actually not making this part up. My granddad’s older sister was his art teacher—isn’t that wild? She said he had been a good-hearted boy and that he tried to apologize to her before all this went down.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know that what I do isn’t right. That I take advantage of the populace to my own advantage. You taught me better than that. It’s no excuse, but I got swept up in the magic and everything. I’m too much of a coward to change anything.”

My great aunt didn’t forgive him, not then. “It takes more than feeling sad to make things better,” she said. “Come back to me once you’ve done something about it.” But of course he never did come back.

Still lost deep in thought, Mandrake went off to the theater where the coup first took place. You all know this part. Focusing so much on his internal conflict and on how he could live up to the person my great aunt would want him to be, he didn’t even notice anything was wrong with the show until it was too late.

The faction of magicians doing the coup—the coup-ers?—dragged him to the parliament building with all the others and summoned demons into themselves and became possessed and all that.

Then they gave him the ultimatum. Join them and summon a demon into his body or die. Mandrake didn’t really want to join them, but what kind of choice is that? And as I said before, he was a bit of a coward. He could have chosen any demon to call, but Bartimaeus was familiar, and in times of stress, people tend to default to the familiar. It wasn’t that they had any special bond, and Mandrake didn’t even question that Bartimaeus would steal his body given the opportunity. He simply had to pick one, and this was the first name he thought of.

But somehow, he managed to choose one of the few demons in the world who had some concept of human morality. And when Bartimaeus found himself in this new situation, he discovered that he couldn’t actually kill Mandrake and take the body all for himself.

“I’m gonna regret this,” Bartimaeus said to Mandrake mentally. “But lay low and leave the talking to me, and maybe we’ll both survive this.”

“What?” Mandrake asked, because he was unsurprisingly rather confused.

But Bartimaeus just shushed him, and feeling that survival of some sort would be better than none whatsoever, Mandrake obeyed. He kept quiet in the back of his mind as Bartimaeus moved his limbs, playing along with all the other demons, until finally he could escape to somewhere the other demons were not, and they were left alone.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Mandrake demanded with his own mouth, the moment he was sure they were safe.

“Trying to keep you safe!”

“What? Why?!”

“God knows,” Bartimaeus said, though a part of him did know. “I only came here to tell you that you really do need to leave all control of the body to me, no matter what. So stop squirming around in there, and don’t cause any trouble. I don’t want you dead, but the others would. I’ll figure out someway to get away from them, and let you out or whatever, but until then, you can’t make a sound.”

Mandrake considered his options. He could do as Bartimaeus told him. He could stay hidden and nothing too bad would happen, or at least he would survive, and that was the most important thing. But the words of his former teacher rang in his mind. “Don’t come back until you’ve made the world better.” If there ever was a time that the world needed someone to step in and improve it, it was now.

“Escape,” Mandrake said. “From the  _ demons _ . Who want to take over the world and kill all of humanity. Please tell me, just where would be safe after all of that?”

“Well. I’m sure there’s somewhere.”

“No, we need to fight back,” Mandrake said.

“Absolutely not.”

“Fine, then I’ll just do it. Leave my body to me, and  _ I’ll _ go save everyone. I know I’m not the best person, but leaving all humans to die when I had the opportunity to stop it would be kind of low, even for me.”

Bartimaeus hardly wanted to die either. Every instinct was telling him to lay low, to just survive, and everything else would work out somehow. But he couldn’t help but think of Ptolemy who wanted demons and humans to have peace, and how that would no longer be able to happen if he let the other demons go unchecked. He thought about his own grief at Ptolemy’s death and wondered if that was the last thing all humans would feel as they watched their world crumble around them, right before they died.

“If you must,” he said. “But please tell me you have a plan.”

“What we need is some really powerful weapon,” Mandrake said.

And you know the rest of the story. He defeats the leader of the demons with Gladstone’s staff, and saves the day, dying in the process. The one good magician. Or at least the only good British one, I don’t know about other countries, though I can’t imagine they’re all that different.

The end.

Yes, I know this is not a creepy story, I told you it wouldn’t be. I don’t know any. And this was only  _ mildly _ influenced by my favorite comic book character being a consensual possession story, I swear. I probably would have come up with this idea even without that. Shut up. I know it’s not likely, I just thought it was neat. And you have to admit, the stuff the witnesses said combined with facts we know does make it easy to draw the lines.

Anyway, if you think you can do better, I dare you to try. I’m done.


End file.
